Three at Last!

What do Dale Earnhardt, Britney Spears and Alexandre Dumas have in common? The number "three" would nail it: stock car number, hit song and musketeers. Good luck, we're told, comes in threes. As does bad luck, along with Wise Men, Cups of Tea and Little Pigs. What is it about Earthlings (inhabiting the third planet from the sun) that attracts us to the number three? We seem to have a fixation with ...

Moving right along (the threeway), the evolution of our modern "3" symbol can be easily traced from three lines of the ancient Brahmin Indians (leftmost glyph) through the 4th century Gupta Indians (second glyph) to the Indian Nagari notation (8th century on, third glyph), who rotated the lines clockwise, adding a slight downward stroke until the strokes connected with the lines below-fourth and fifth glyphs. Ghubar Arabs eliminated the extra stroke (last glyph) when they brought their notation to Spain in the 11th century.

If three is powerful, three cubed, 27, must be super-powerful. And indeed, 1/27 = .037... repeated to infinity, while 1/37 = .027... repeated to infinity. For good measure, 27 x 37 = 999 = 3 x 333!

Threedom: It's our birthright.

Barry Evans (barryevans9yahoo.com) is still looking for his third eye. The book of his first 80 Field Notes is available from Eureka Books or from the author.

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About The Author

Bio:Barry Evans lives in Old Town Eureka with his girlfriend (and wife) Louisa Rogers, several kayaks and bikes, and a stuffed gorilla named “Nameless.” A recovering civil engineer, he is the author of two McGraw-Hill popular science books and has taught science and history. His Field Notes anthologies are available...Barry Evans lives in Old Town Eureka with his girlfriend (and wife) Louisa Rogers, several kayaks and bikes, and a stuffed gorilla named “Nameless.” A recovering civil engineer, he is the author of two McGraw-Hill popular science books and has taught science and history. His Field Notes anthologies are available at local bookstores.more